Re: Problems with the mailing list?

[David Wright]

On Sun 20 Oct 2019 at 09:50:35 (+0100), Lilypond-User wrote:
> On 20/10/2019 02:30, Freeman Gilmore wrote:
> > Not sure what you mean, I do not see my post either.    This works for
> > me, just add you address to  "To", you can do this Bcc.   Try it!   True
> > it will not go through the LP mail service but you will see what you
> > sent in  your Inbox
> > ƒg
> 
> Thanks, I'm quite well aware about extra "To:" entries, "CC:" entries or
> "BCC:".  I'm also aware of the "Sent" mailbox which preserves an
> outgoing copy.  All of the above though short-circuits the process
> inasmuch as they are returned either by my MUA (Thunderbird) or else by
> the first MTA that it hits.  None of them prove that the message has
> reached Lily's MUA and hence the other members of the mailing
> list.

Hi, I'm afraid I'm no expert on email and mailing lists, so I can only
report what I see and suggest what might help.

There appears to be something odd going on somewhere, but I've only
noticed it on this list (of the two I subscribe to). The first
instance I happen to have saved is from 22 July and, funnily enough,
was about seeing attachments (in the digest subscription, I think).
In all, I have about 16 examples, involving 5 senders. The symptoms
are that I see the (interesting) headers in a very odd order:

 Subject: Re: Problems with the mailing list?
 To: Freeman Gilmore <xxx>,
        Urs Liska <xxx>
 Cc: J Martin Rushton via lilypond-user <address@hidden>
 References: <address@hidden> …
 [… crypt stuff …]
 Message-ID: <address@hidden>
 Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2019 09:50:35 +0100
 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101
        Thunderbird/60.9.0
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 In-Reply-To: <CAM=7=address@hidden>
 [… list stuff …]
 From: J Martin Rushton via lilypond-user <address@hidden>
 Reply-To: J Martin Rushton <address@hidden>

which annoyingly makes mutt list your From address as Lilypond-User,
sorting you wrongly. I suspect the Reply-To: was added by the list
server to take account of the wrong From: address. I also assume
that the Cc: field was copied (by you or automatically) from the
Freeman Gilmore post's field, like mine here (using group-reply).

In the "simple digest", the (complete) headers are:

 Message: 5
 Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2019 09:50:35 +0100
 From: J Martin Rushton <address@hidden>
 To: Freeman Gilmore <xxx>, Urs Liska <xxx>
 Cc: J Martin Rushton via lilypond-user <address@hidden>
 Subject: Re: Problems with the mailing list?
 Message-ID: <address@hidden>
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

The user in the 22 July instance was a "simple digest" subscriber.

Back in April, your headers were more normal:

 Subject: Re: LP-set songbook released
 To: address@hidden
 References: <address@hidden> …
 From: J Martin Rushton <address@hidden>
 [… crypt stuff …]
 Message-ID: <address@hidden>
 Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2019 22:42:00 +0100
 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101
        Thunderbird/60.6.1
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 In-Reply-To: <address@hidden>
 [… list stuff …]

For comparison, my postings (you can check this one) are headed
in the order:

 Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2019 22:53:39 -0500
 From: David Wright <address@hidden>
 To: Andrew Bernard <xxx>
 Cc: lilypond-user Mailinglist <address@hidden>
 Subject: Re: Double-underline markup
 Message-ID: <address@hidden>
 X-ASG-Orig-Subj: Re: Double-underline markup
 References: <address@hidden> …
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 Content-Disposition: inline
 In-Reply-To: <CAK5QfnUi=address@hidden>
 User-Agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13)
 [… list stuff …]
 Reply-To: address@hidden

(My MUA writes the Reply-To: header, but AFAICT before the In-Reply-To:.)

I assume you always used to receive your own posts. (During my time
with btinternet.com, I didn't subscribe to any lists.) I'm aware that
some systems (like gmail) don't normally send list posts back to the
user who sent them, but has btinternet.com become one of these?

Sometimes things change on the list server. For example, since about
7 June (vol 199 issue 15), the "simple digest" is sent out encoded as
base64 instead of plain text. Were other changes made?

As for suggestions, three possibilities come to mind.

1) I don't remember how the btinternet.com service worked, but do you
have a spare secondary address that you could also subscribe with,
perhaps in "simple digest" mode (non-MIME).

2) Check the web to see when your posts reach the lists;
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2019-10/threads.html
is this month's address. Sorts with newest threads first.

3) Send a bcc: to an external address on one of the free services like
hotmail. I find this useful to "prove" that I've sent an email to
someone: if they claim non-receipt, it's their problem on incoming,
not mine on outgoing.

Sorry not to be of more help.

Cheers,
David.